For my gaming machine, I was looking into getting this motherboard and using it with my Athlon X3 OC @ B50 processor. The best part is it comes with 8GB of DDR3 ram! The reason why I'm upgrading is:

1. I don't want my wallet to get raped on ram prices.2. In the future I want to do SLI. My current ASrock only supports X-fire.3. UEFI BIOS4. I can always upgrade to an AMD 8350 in the future.5. 6 gb/s SATA (Currently have SATA 2)6. Lossless Audio never hurt anyone.

What do you guys think? Good quality Mobo? Got another (better) suggestion? Let me know.

1. RAM prices are dirt cheap! If you're buying a motherboard because it comes with 'free' RAM, you could be making a big mistake.

Why upgrade? I'd wait till you actually buy a motherboard + RAM + new CPU. If all you're doing is upgrading the motherboard and RAM but not CPU (it's not very clear in your post), then why bother? Yes, you get SLI, UEFI BIOS (really? not a huge deal), SATA3, but you're not getting much out of it. Also, since this is your gaming rig, get yourself a decent GPU and CPU - the FX-8350 should be decent.

1. RAM prices are dirt cheap! If you're buying a motherboard because it comes with 'free' RAM, you could be making a big mistake.

Why upgrade? I'd wait till you actually buy a motherboard + RAM + new CPU. If all you're doing is upgrading the motherboard and RAM but not CPU (it's not very clear in your post), then why bother? Yes, you get SLI, UEFI BIOS (really? not a huge deal), SATA3, but you're not getting much out of it. Also, since this is your gaming rig, get yourself a decent GPU and CPU - the FX-8350 should be decent.

I have DDR2, currently. 50 dollars for 4gb of ram is a little expensive. I want to go to DDR3 so it's cheap to upgrade. I currently have a 550TI. I can't use an 8350 because I currently have an AM2+ board.

LOL! It's my birthday and everybody gave me money. What should I upgrade? I've been going back and forth with myself about this all day.

Will you want to SLI with the card you have now, or is this just a plan for the future?

I also agree that this will be a mostly worthless upgrade. You won't see any sort of performance gain unless you are doing something that utilizes the extra RAM.

I think it would be a much better idea to save that money until you can buy a new CPU at least. RAM is super cheap and will probably continue getting cheaper.

Perhaps just buy a SSD now, which will give you a really nice performance upgrade from what you have now. Then in the future, upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and RAM all at once, and then a new GPU down the line.

I have DDR2, currently. 50 dollars for 4gb of ram is a little expensive. I want to go to DDR3 so it's cheap to upgrade. I currently have a 550TI. I can't use an 8350 because I currently have an AM2+ board.

LOL! It's my birthday and everybody gave me money. What should I upgrade? I've been going back and forth with myself about this all day.

To actually get a noticeable upgrade, get new CPU (your FX-8350), new motherboard, and RAM. If you have extra money, get an SSD. The SSD will be a huge improvement, since the slowest part in most computers is the spinning hard drive.

I also agree that this will be a mostly worthless upgrade. You won't see any sort of performance gain unless you are doing something that utilizes the extra RAM.

I think it would be a much better idea to save that money until you can buy a new CPU at least. RAM is super cheap and will probably continue getting cheaper.

Perhaps just buy a SSD now, which will give you a really nice performance upgrade from what you have now. Then in the future, upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and RAM all at once, and then a new GPU down the line.

I currently have an OCZ 128 GB drive that I use for my OS. Maybe I should update my app data drive.

To actually get a noticeable upgrade, get new CPU (your FX-8350), new motherboard, and RAM. If you have extra money, get an SSD. The SSD will be a huge improvement, since the slowest part in most computers is the spinning hard drive.

If I'm going to replace everything, I'll probably go with a lower end i7. See above for ssd .

I currently have an OCZ 128 GB drive that I use for my OS. Maybe I should update my app data drive.

Oh nice! You don't need a SSD for anything except your OS and select programs you want to run quicker. So since you already have one, then you should be set in that regards. I would just check to see if the firmware is up-to-date since OCZ is really good with boosting performance in those updates.

For a CPU, I'd recommend an i5. It's cheaper and is basically the same as an i7 except for the extra 4 hyper-threading cores on the i7 which aren't beneficial to much.And the i5 "k" version can usually be overclocked really well, if that interests you.

Oh nice! You don't need a SSD for anything except your OS and select programs you want to run quicker. So since you already have one, then you should be set in that regards. I would just check to see if the firmware is up-to-date since OCZ is really good with boosting performance in those updates.

For a CPU, I'd recommend an i5. It's cheaper and is basically the same as an i7 except for the extra 4 hyper-threading cores on the i7 which aren't beneficial to much.And the i5 "k" version can usually be overclocked really well, if that interests you.

I'll probably do a full rebuild next year, and by that time, they'll probably have something new. I'm thinking about getting a USB3 add in card and a usb 3 external back up hdd.

I'll probably do a full rebuild next year, and by that time, they'll probably have something new. I'm thinking about getting a USB3 add in card and a usb 3 external back up hdd.

I don't think they'll be doing away with i5 and i7 for a while. They just seem to do generation upgrades (Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, etc) and sometimes change the socket type. By next year, you will probably be able to get a Sandy Bridge i5 for really cheap. Nothing really earth-shattering has been updated in Ivy Bridge and I doubt much will change when Haswell comes out. Power consumption goes down and each generation gets about 10% faster, but CPUs are already overpowered for almost every application out there.

I don't think they'll be doing away with i5 and i7 for a while. They just seem to do generation upgrades (Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, etc) and sometimes change the socket type. By next year, you will probably be able to get a Sandy Bridge i5 for really cheap. Nothing really earth-shattering has been updated in Ivy Bridge and I doubt much will change when Haswell comes out. Power consumption goes down and each generation gets about 10% faster, but CPUs are already overpowered for almost every application out there.